Monthly Calendar-Report for October 2016
(It’s October. Break out the Fall Foliage pictures)
Autumn splendor. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)
—WOW!
The October 2016 entry of my own calendar is one of the BEST we ever got.
It was taken last Fall by my brother. I took the same, but everything I shot hand-held (not on tripod) was blurred.
It has to be the best fall-foliage picture we ever snagged.
It’s a Norfolk Southern stacker on Track Four westbound just west of the Route 53 overpass north of Cresson (“KRESS-in”).
The train is coming down from the summit of Allegheny Mountain.
We spent the previous evening looking for a photo-location used by photographer Don Woods in 2015’s Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar.
I needed a fall-foliage shot for my calendar. I needed orange leaves.
We knew exactly where his picture was shot. It’s on the 1898 bypass between Portage and Cassandra on the old Pennsy main across PA. It’s just before the line enters the giant rock cut near Cassandra.
We trekked around through woods in gathering gloom trying to find that location.
We didn’t find it. We decided photographer Woods took advantage of employment with Norfolk Southern to use a company truck to get to this location from an access-road. —Like he got on the right-of-way far down the bypass, then drove the mile or two to the location.
We were far west in South Fork the next afternoon taking pictures. We knew from Phil Faudi 23M was climbing The Hill.
First we shot in Gallitzin, but it was late enough to render a shadow problem.
We then headed toward the Route 53 overpass. It has five tracks underneath. “We’ve shot there so many times,” I said. “Why don’t we go down that side-road north of Cresson. It’s next to the tracks, which would be above our location, but the light is right.”
We went to the side-road. We pulled into what looked like trackside access.
“23M, 249, Track Four, CLEAR,” the engineer said on our scanners.
Here it comes! 249 is the signal just before the Route 53 overpass.
BAM! Got it! Sun is out, orange leaves, the whole kibosh.
In my opinion we did better than photographer Woods. It’s late afternoon.
But no shadow problem here. The sun is directly illuminating the engine, plus the trees.
Can there be an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG-1? (Photo by John Dziobko.)
—The October 2016 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is GG-1 #4900 rushing a commuter-train through Metuchen, NJ.
The train is probably southbound (railroad westbound, I think) out of New York City.
It’s into late afternoon sun.
4900 has the second paint-scheme, not Loewy’s (“LOW-eee”) cat-whiskers. It’s the scheme I saw most.
Loewy’s cat-whiskers were costly to reproduce. The single-stripe at least follows Loewy’s lines.
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again.
In my opinion Pennsy’s GG-1 is the greatest railroad locomotive ever made.
As a resident of northern DE in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, I was lucky enough to experience ‘em.
And it seemed every time I did they were doing 90-100 mph!
Time to trot out my GG-1 pictures; I’ll only post four.
—In the first I had set up trackside in the old Claymont (DE) commuter station.
I was expecting a GG-1 passenger express on a middle of four tracks.
Not so. Here it comes: 90-100 mph on an outside track I’m only 10 feet from.
YOW-ZUH! Had I not had my arm hooked around a light-stanchion I woulda been sucked into the train.
—Second is a GG-1 express on the flyover just north of old Bell interlocking.
The flyover bridges the entrance to Wilmington’s Edgemoor Yard.
At that time I lived north of Wilmington.
—Third is another flyover picture, except this time the GG-1 is bridging Shellpot Creek, also north of Bell interlocking.
—GG-1 #4896 is the desktop picture on my computer.
4896 is the only GG-1 I ever went through, and this picture is the only one I ever got of 4896, although I saw it many times.
The engine is at Wilmington Shops. Pennsy serviced its GG-1s at Wilmington Shops.
The track in the foreground is electrified access from the main.
4896 was scrapped.
A single GG-1 could temporarily put about 9,000 horsepower to railhead, great for rocketing heavy passenger-trains out of stations.
In 1959 my neighbor and I took a railfan trip to Philadelphia. We rode back home to Wilmington on Pennsy’s Afternoon Congressional, 26 cars led by a GG-1.
Within minutes we were cruising at 90.
The GG-1 used 12 of the same traction-motors used in the MP-54 commuter car. You could overload ‘em a few minutes, to leap a train out of a station.
Do that too long and the traction-motors overheat.
Current road diesels are good for 4,400 horsepower.
A single GG-1 might pull a heavy passenger-train from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, where electrification ended, and the GG-1 had to be swapped out for non-electric power.
Four EMD E-units were often needed to power the same train the GG-1 delivered.
Enginemen poo-pooed those diesels compared to a GG-1.
Pennsy knew they had a good one when they developed it in the ‘30s. They engaged industrial designer Raymond Loewy (“LOW-eee”) to improve the looks of the engine.
He didn’t do much. Mainly he convinced Pennsy to ditch the riveted shell for welded. Only one GG-1 has the riveted shell, #4800, “Old Rivets,” the prototype.
He also rounded the top of the front door to match the headlight (the “Cyclops” eye).
He also improved the paint striping.
Quite a few GG-1s were saved. #4935 was repainted into the original Loewy cat-whisker scheme.
It’s stored inside unserviceable at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA.
Not too long ago it was dragged to Washington DC to participate in a Loewy memorial.
It can’t be operated, nor can other GG-1s. Their transformers were filled with cancerous PCB-based fluid, so were filled with concrete or sand.
The Northeast Corridor and line to Harrisburg, both originally Pennsy but now Amtrak, are still electrified. But I think the wire current is no longer what the GG-1 used.
#4935. (Photo by Tom Hughes.)
(Tom Hughes is my brother’s son, very much a railfan.)
Imagine going to the grocery in this. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)
—It looks like you could. It looks drivable.
The October 2016 entry in my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a hot-rodded 1932 Ford four-door sedan.
It has a ’60 Corvette motor and four-on-the-floor.
Looks pretty butch. Stick yer foot into it, and hang on fer dear life.
The only body-modification was chopping the top three inches.
Doff yer fedora!
By 1932 auto-manufacturers were realizing they had to get the rear-seat passengers off the rear axle.
Ford had not gotten to it yet, was moving toward it for 1935, and got to it for 1937.
Having the rear-seat passengers atop the rear axle makes a bouncy ride, but also makes a great-looking car: close-coupled.
A few years ago I saw a great-looking Model-A four-door hotrod.
It hadn’t been parked yet; it was driving in.
The only thing wrong was the Model-A grill-surround. I prefer the ’32.
The guy’s entire family was inside, Pa driving, Ma in the passenger seat, and two small children in back.
The car had a SmallBlock Chevy, probably four-on-the-floor. It wasn’t automatic.
Everyone was smiling. Rumpita-rumpita. The car leaped from pillar to post.
The common feeling is four-door sedans don’t make hotrods, but everyone was happy.
Four-door sedans make great hotrods.
Over-cammed Camaros that barely idle seem more for posturing.
“Hey man. My hood-bulge is taller than yours.”
Such a Camaro would creme this four-door ’32.
But I’ve seen Ma in an over-cammed Camaro: cowering and uncomfortable. Where’s the joy?
Years ago I saw a friend, since deceased, riding with another friend in an open Deuce hotrod, a roadster. 32 degrees. He was shivering but smiling. Both were smiling.
Orange leaves; it must be Fall. (Photo by Kyle Ori.)
— The October 2016 entry in Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern grain-train crossing the trestle in Rocky River, OH.
Anyone who does a scenic calendar, like me for example, knows the rules. Snow for January, February, December, and maybe November, melting snow for March, orange leaves in October and maybe November, and green foliage otherwise (except not that green in April and May).
So the calendar-guys at Norfolk Southern say we need orange leaves for October.
Photographer Ori provides same.
Except to me this picture is too complicated. The river is full of watercraft docks. They distract.
The area is near Lake Erie. The boats would head out to the lake.
Rocky River is west of Cleveland. Traffic volume on this line is low.
I can’t help wondering if this is the old Nickel Plate Chicago line. Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, which became New York Central, built lakeside, and what became Nickel Plate built slightly inland, up on the plateau overlooking the lake.
That meant it had to cross gorges that emptied into the lake.
That inland line was built to end Lake Shore & Michigan Southern’s monopoly on Chicago/Buffalo traffic. Also St. Louis.
Nickel Plate’s name is “New York, Chicago & St. Louis.” It never attained New York City.
Trestles galore, just like this one. But it may not be Nickel Plate’s Chicago line — my 1948 railroad atlas indicates it might be.
I did some Google satellite-view research, and many lines enter Cleveland. None are identified.
Photographer Ori’s father, Dave Ori, a Norfolk Southern yardmaster, told his conductor son this grain-train was coming, and would be on this line.
So photographer Ori got the picture. Perfect light, which it would be south of the trestle.
Look carefully and you’ll see a a highway bridge just north of the trestle. But the train masks it.
“There will always be an England.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)
—Herewith the airplane that won the Battle of Britain.
Not the Supermarine Spitfire.
The October 2016 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Hawker Hurricane.
After July of 1940, Hitler began sending waves of Luftwaffe bombers to get Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill responded thusly: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.”
German bombing at first was convoys and ports, but gravitated to terror bombing of civilians.
The Brits sent legions of Hurricanes to greet the German bombers, and blast them out of the sky. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign fought entirely by air forces.
It wasn’t quick or easy. German bombing gravitated into The Blitz. Hitler had to give up his plan to invade Britain, and resort to unpiloted V1 and V2 rockets to terrorize the citizenry.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“In 1933, Hawker’s chief designer, Sydney Camm, decided to design an aircraft which would fulfill a British Air Ministry specification calling for a new monoplane fighter.
His prototype, powered by a 990 horsepower Rolls Royce Merlin ‘C’ engine, first flew on November 6th, 1935, and quickly surpassed expectations and performance estimates.
Official trials began three months later, and in June 1936, Hawker received an initial order for 600 aircraft from the Royal Air Force.
The first aircraft had fabric wings. To power the new aircraft (now officially designated the ‘Hurricane,’) the RAF ordered the new 1,030 horsepower Merlin II engine.
The first production Hurricane flew on October 12th, 1937, and was delivered to the 111 Squadron at RAF Northolt two months later.
A year later, around 200 had been delivered, and demand for the airplane had increased enough that Hawker contracted with the Gloster Aircraft company to build them also.
During the production run, the fabric-covered wing was replaced by all-metal, a bullet-proof windscreen was added, and the engine was upgraded to the Merlin III.
August 1940 brought what has become the Hurricane’s shining moment in history: The Battle of Britain.
RAF Hurricanes accounted for more enemy aircraft kills than all other defenses combined, including all aircraft and ground defenses.
Later in the war, the Hurricane served admirably in North Africa, Burma, Malta, and nearly every other theater in which the RAF participated.
The Hurricane was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most versatile fighter aircraft of WWII, and it remained in service with the RAF until January 1947.”
The Spitfire was a fabulous airplane.
But it wasn’t the airplane that won the Battle of Britain.
“I don’t know how you can purchase a German car (a Volkswagen Rabbit),” growled an English friend long ago.
“After what they did to us in London. Air-raid shelters, innocent civilians killed, buildings reduced to rubble.”
I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above the Arizona.
Four Japanese motorcycles and three Japanese cars, plus two German cars.
I currently own a Ford, but it’s essentially a Mazda = Japanese.
Mt. Carmel ore-train or not? (Photo by Robert F. Collins©.)
—I don’t think it is.
The October 2016 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsy freight charging out of Northumberland (PA) Yard, through the parallel twin bridges over the Susquehanna.
It’s led by Decapod (2-10-0) #4315, one of the engines Pennsy crews hated.
They were hard to fire, and rode rough. As a small-drivered freight engine they couldn’t be well counterbalanced. As a 10-drivered engine the side-rods were heavy.
Pennsy tried aluminum side-rods to reduce weight, but the application needed steel.
The picture is May 10th, 1957, and Deks were kept at Northumberland for the heavy Mt. Carmel ore-train.
But I don’t think this is a Mt. Carmel ore-train. Mt. Carmel ore-trains usually had double-headed Deks up front, plus two more pushing the rear.
It’s identified as train #390, and 4315 was probably what was available.
So the train was assigned a Dek, wildly bucking if it got any speed.
The Mt. Carmel ore-train ran iron-ore up Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch for delivery to Lehigh Valley Railroad. It was probably headed for steel-mills in Bethlehem.
Pennsy was always conservative about motive-power until after WWII. The Dek is a 10-drivered Consolidation (2-8-0), what Pennsy had so many of, especially in PA.
In PA Pennsy was a mountain railroad with stiff grades. Its mainline crossed Allegheny Mountain, especially challenging.
Speedy locomotives wouldn’t do. What were needed were down-and-dirty, nothing but drivers, with all the engine-weight on those drivers.
Ergo: Consolidations, then the Decapod.
Growling diesels began displacing steam, but Deks were well-suited for the Mt. Carmel ore-train, and also heavy coal-trains up to the wharf at Sodus Point (NY) on Lake Ontario. That line was difficult.
Deks were used on Pennsy until the end of steam in late 1957.
In fact, the last train on Pennsy pulled by a steam-engine was led by a Dek.
The most collectible car of all time.
—Another case of my Jerry Powell classic-car calendar being better than my Dan Lyons Classic-Car calendar.
But not by much.
The ’57 Chevy picture is not very good.
Jerry Powell is my niece’s boyfriend. He’s a car-guy like me. He got it for me as a Christmas present.
But my Tide-mark Classic Car calendar is one of those dumb-looking ’40 Buick woody stationwagons.
HO-HUM.
Everyone wants a ’57 Chevy.
Which is amazing since Ford outsold Chevrolet that year, first time in years.
Detroit was obsessed with bigger equals better, so the ’57 Ford was an all-new bigger car. Prior to 1957, Ford was based on the 1949 Shoebox. Significantly rebodied and re-engineered, but still the Shoebox underneath.
The ’57 Chevy was essentially the ’55 rebodied, plus a lower firewall. It wasn’t upsized.
That didn’t happen until the 1958 model.
My family had two ’57 Chevys at first, plus a third later to be restored.
One was a Bel Air four-door sedan, with the ancient Stovebolt Six.
The car was a pig. Even our ’53 Chevy with PowerGlide Six was faster. (Be careful with that Stovebolt link; the Stovebolt was the early four-main bearing six available through 1962.)
The resto was also a six; a two-door hardtop I think.
Best of all was our Bel Air stationwagon. It had a 283 Power-Pak four-barrel, Chevy’s new SmallBlock V8 of 1955.
It also had duals. (“What sense does that make? That’s two tailpipes to replace.”)
It was fairly strong, and I had fun with it — the first decent car our family ever owned = not a pig.
A secret quarter-mile drag-strip had been marked on a local country road.
80 mph in PowerGlide Lo; air-cleaner off.
I goosed it once making a left-turn into an intersection and almost slid into a tree.
The ’57 Chevy went on to become one of the most popular used-cars of all time.
And now it’s the most collectible classic car, although the early Mustang would be competitive.
A convertible like this, in perfect shape, might command $150,000.
I look and wonder what anyone saw in this? A mish-mash of styling themes. Tailfins, WrapAround windshield, goofy appendages on the hood, fake exhaust outlets, Caddy-like grill heavy with chrome.
How many ’57 Chevys did I see with that center medallion bar broke?
I prefer the ’55 with its Ferrari grill.
Yet the ’57 Chevy had that fabulous SmallBlock V8 — even at one horsepower per cubic-inch! (Phenomenal at that time.)
A friend was street-racing his father’s ’54 Oldsmobile, and blew the tranny or something.
“No ’57 Chevy for you!” his father exclaimed. “You’d destroy it.”
Woody! (Photo by Dan Lyons©.)
—The October 2016 entry in my Tide-mark Classic-Car calendar is a 1940 Buick “Woody” stationwagon.
The thing to say here is that prior to 1949 all car-based stationwagons had wooden bodies. The Chevrolet “Suburban,“ all-steel, was truck-based.
Some body manufacturer would take a car chassis and front end, and construct a wooden body on it.
I don’t think stationwagons were made by the car manufacturers. They were called “stationwagons” because they were used by hotels, etc. to cart passengers and their luggage from a train-station.
Plymouth’s all-steel wagon was a capital idea. Soon all the car-manufacturers were making all-steel stationwagons with wood-looking applique.
Ford was very successful. It’s “Country Squire” was all-steel with wood applique and separation-bars.
Ford was also successful without appliques, its all-steel “Ranch Wagon.”
The all-steel stationwagon became very popular, the family car before the minivan.
The test of a wagon was whether it could swallow a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood laid flat on the floor.
Many stationwagons had seating for nine. You could also camp out; put your sleeping-bag on the floor.
For me, riding in a stationwagon was adventure. My first was a ’51 Plymouth Suburban.
My summer-camp for boys used a ’50 Dodge Suburban as its camp car. I was taken to the hospital in it after a horse stepped on my foot.
By 1955 Chevrolet was making all-steel stationwagons without the appliques.
My family had a ’57 Chevrolet stationwagon — see photo above.
What a great idea! A car you could sleep in.
So for me the stationwagon became even more desirable than convertibles or hardtops. A ’55 Chevy wagon with 327 four-on-the-floor.
Didn’t happen. Minivans scuttled stationwagons, and now we have SUVs (Sport-Utility-Vehicles).
SUVs started out as trucks, but now are more car-like but with All-Wheel-Drive.
I drive a 2012 Ford Escape SUV, small, but perfect for chasing trains (see lead calendar-report).
I can’t sleep in it; not big enough.
My camping days are over.
Up until 1949 stationwagons were like this Buick. Wooden bodies on a car-chassis and front-end. Ash with mahogany veneer inlays.
“Woodies” became very popular with the surfer crowd on the west coast.
To me that’s just a fad.
Put a rack on top and take your board to the beach with your woody.
If no rack, open the rear window, and stuff your board on top of the tailgate.
You could also do that with a minivan, SUV, or pickup.
Autumn splendor. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)
—WOW!
The October 2016 entry of my own calendar is one of the BEST we ever got.
It was taken last Fall by my brother. I took the same, but everything I shot hand-held (not on tripod) was blurred.
It has to be the best fall-foliage picture we ever snagged.
It’s a Norfolk Southern stacker on Track Four westbound just west of the Route 53 overpass north of Cresson (“KRESS-in”).
The train is coming down from the summit of Allegheny Mountain.
We spent the previous evening looking for a photo-location used by photographer Don Woods in 2015’s Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar.
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| Woods’ attempt. (Photo by Don Woods.) |
We knew exactly where his picture was shot. It’s on the 1898 bypass between Portage and Cassandra on the old Pennsy main across PA. It’s just before the line enters the giant rock cut near Cassandra.
We trekked around through woods in gathering gloom trying to find that location.
We didn’t find it. We decided photographer Woods took advantage of employment with Norfolk Southern to use a company truck to get to this location from an access-road. —Like he got on the right-of-way far down the bypass, then drove the mile or two to the location.
We were far west in South Fork the next afternoon taking pictures. We knew from Phil Faudi 23M was climbing The Hill.
First we shot in Gallitzin, but it was late enough to render a shadow problem.
We then headed toward the Route 53 overpass. It has five tracks underneath. “We’ve shot there so many times,” I said. “Why don’t we go down that side-road north of Cresson. It’s next to the tracks, which would be above our location, but the light is right.”
We went to the side-road. We pulled into what looked like trackside access.
“23M, 249, Track Four, CLEAR,” the engineer said on our scanners.
Here it comes! 249 is the signal just before the Route 53 overpass.
BAM! Got it! Sun is out, orange leaves, the whole kibosh.
In my opinion we did better than photographer Woods. It’s late afternoon.
But no shadow problem here. The sun is directly illuminating the engine, plus the trees.
Can there be an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG-1? (Photo by John Dziobko.)
—The October 2016 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is GG-1 #4900 rushing a commuter-train through Metuchen, NJ.
The train is probably southbound (railroad westbound, I think) out of New York City.
It’s into late afternoon sun.
4900 has the second paint-scheme, not Loewy’s (“LOW-eee”) cat-whiskers. It’s the scheme I saw most.
Loewy’s cat-whiskers were costly to reproduce. The single-stripe at least follows Loewy’s lines.
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again.
In my opinion Pennsy’s GG-1 is the greatest railroad locomotive ever made.
As a resident of northern DE in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, I was lucky enough to experience ‘em.
And it seemed every time I did they were doing 90-100 mph!
Time to trot out my GG-1 pictures; I’ll only post four.
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| STAND BACK. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
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| Over the entrance to Edgemoor Yard. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
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| Over Shellpot Creek. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
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| My computer desktop wallpaper. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
I was expecting a GG-1 passenger express on a middle of four tracks.
Not so. Here it comes: 90-100 mph on an outside track I’m only 10 feet from.
YOW-ZUH! Had I not had my arm hooked around a light-stanchion I woulda been sucked into the train.
—Second is a GG-1 express on the flyover just north of old Bell interlocking.
The flyover bridges the entrance to Wilmington’s Edgemoor Yard.
At that time I lived north of Wilmington.
—Third is another flyover picture, except this time the GG-1 is bridging Shellpot Creek, also north of Bell interlocking.
—GG-1 #4896 is the desktop picture on my computer.
4896 is the only GG-1 I ever went through, and this picture is the only one I ever got of 4896, although I saw it many times.
The engine is at Wilmington Shops. Pennsy serviced its GG-1s at Wilmington Shops.
The track in the foreground is electrified access from the main.
4896 was scrapped.
A single GG-1 could temporarily put about 9,000 horsepower to railhead, great for rocketing heavy passenger-trains out of stations.
In 1959 my neighbor and I took a railfan trip to Philadelphia. We rode back home to Wilmington on Pennsy’s Afternoon Congressional, 26 cars led by a GG-1.
Within minutes we were cruising at 90.
The GG-1 used 12 of the same traction-motors used in the MP-54 commuter car. You could overload ‘em a few minutes, to leap a train out of a station.
Do that too long and the traction-motors overheat.
Current road diesels are good for 4,400 horsepower.
A single GG-1 might pull a heavy passenger-train from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, where electrification ended, and the GG-1 had to be swapped out for non-electric power.
Four EMD E-units were often needed to power the same train the GG-1 delivered.
Enginemen poo-pooed those diesels compared to a GG-1.
Pennsy knew they had a good one when they developed it in the ‘30s. They engaged industrial designer Raymond Loewy (“LOW-eee”) to improve the looks of the engine.
He didn’t do much. Mainly he convinced Pennsy to ditch the riveted shell for welded. Only one GG-1 has the riveted shell, #4800, “Old Rivets,” the prototype.
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| Old Rivets. |
He also improved the paint striping.
Quite a few GG-1s were saved. #4935 was repainted into the original Loewy cat-whisker scheme.
It’s stored inside unserviceable at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA.
Not too long ago it was dragged to Washington DC to participate in a Loewy memorial.
It can’t be operated, nor can other GG-1s. Their transformers were filled with cancerous PCB-based fluid, so were filled with concrete or sand.
The Northeast Corridor and line to Harrisburg, both originally Pennsy but now Amtrak, are still electrified. But I think the wire current is no longer what the GG-1 used.
#4935. (Photo by Tom Hughes.)
(Tom Hughes is my brother’s son, very much a railfan.)
Imagine going to the grocery in this. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)
—It looks like you could. It looks drivable.
The October 2016 entry in my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a hot-rodded 1932 Ford four-door sedan.
It has a ’60 Corvette motor and four-on-the-floor.
Looks pretty butch. Stick yer foot into it, and hang on fer dear life.
The only body-modification was chopping the top three inches.
Doff yer fedora!
By 1932 auto-manufacturers were realizing they had to get the rear-seat passengers off the rear axle.
Ford had not gotten to it yet, was moving toward it for 1935, and got to it for 1937.
Having the rear-seat passengers atop the rear axle makes a bouncy ride, but also makes a great-looking car: close-coupled.
A few years ago I saw a great-looking Model-A four-door hotrod.
It hadn’t been parked yet; it was driving in.
The only thing wrong was the Model-A grill-surround. I prefer the ’32.
The guy’s entire family was inside, Pa driving, Ma in the passenger seat, and two small children in back.
The car had a SmallBlock Chevy, probably four-on-the-floor. It wasn’t automatic.
Everyone was smiling. Rumpita-rumpita. The car leaped from pillar to post.
The common feeling is four-door sedans don’t make hotrods, but everyone was happy.
Four-door sedans make great hotrods.
Over-cammed Camaros that barely idle seem more for posturing.
“Hey man. My hood-bulge is taller than yours.”
Such a Camaro would creme this four-door ’32.
But I’ve seen Ma in an over-cammed Camaro: cowering and uncomfortable. Where’s the joy?
Years ago I saw a friend, since deceased, riding with another friend in an open Deuce hotrod, a roadster. 32 degrees. He was shivering but smiling. Both were smiling.
Orange leaves; it must be Fall. (Photo by Kyle Ori.)
— The October 2016 entry in Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern grain-train crossing the trestle in Rocky River, OH.
Anyone who does a scenic calendar, like me for example, knows the rules. Snow for January, February, December, and maybe November, melting snow for March, orange leaves in October and maybe November, and green foliage otherwise (except not that green in April and May).
So the calendar-guys at Norfolk Southern say we need orange leaves for October.
Photographer Ori provides same.
Except to me this picture is too complicated. The river is full of watercraft docks. They distract.
The area is near Lake Erie. The boats would head out to the lake.
Rocky River is west of Cleveland. Traffic volume on this line is low.
I can’t help wondering if this is the old Nickel Plate Chicago line. Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, which became New York Central, built lakeside, and what became Nickel Plate built slightly inland, up on the plateau overlooking the lake.
That meant it had to cross gorges that emptied into the lake.
That inland line was built to end Lake Shore & Michigan Southern’s monopoly on Chicago/Buffalo traffic. Also St. Louis.
Nickel Plate’s name is “New York, Chicago & St. Louis.” It never attained New York City.
Trestles galore, just like this one. But it may not be Nickel Plate’s Chicago line — my 1948 railroad atlas indicates it might be.
I did some Google satellite-view research, and many lines enter Cleveland. None are identified.
Photographer Ori’s father, Dave Ori, a Norfolk Southern yardmaster, told his conductor son this grain-train was coming, and would be on this line.
So photographer Ori got the picture. Perfect light, which it would be south of the trestle.
Look carefully and you’ll see a a highway bridge just north of the trestle. But the train masks it.
“There will always be an England.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)
—Herewith the airplane that won the Battle of Britain.
Not the Supermarine Spitfire.
The October 2016 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Hawker Hurricane.
After July of 1940, Hitler began sending waves of Luftwaffe bombers to get Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill responded thusly: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.”
German bombing at first was convoys and ports, but gravitated to terror bombing of civilians.
The Brits sent legions of Hurricanes to greet the German bombers, and blast them out of the sky. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign fought entirely by air forces.
It wasn’t quick or easy. German bombing gravitated into The Blitz. Hitler had to give up his plan to invade Britain, and resort to unpiloted V1 and V2 rockets to terrorize the citizenry.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“In 1933, Hawker’s chief designer, Sydney Camm, decided to design an aircraft which would fulfill a British Air Ministry specification calling for a new monoplane fighter.
His prototype, powered by a 990 horsepower Rolls Royce Merlin ‘C’ engine, first flew on November 6th, 1935, and quickly surpassed expectations and performance estimates.
Official trials began three months later, and in June 1936, Hawker received an initial order for 600 aircraft from the Royal Air Force.
The first aircraft had fabric wings. To power the new aircraft (now officially designated the ‘Hurricane,’) the RAF ordered the new 1,030 horsepower Merlin II engine.
The first production Hurricane flew on October 12th, 1937, and was delivered to the 111 Squadron at RAF Northolt two months later.
A year later, around 200 had been delivered, and demand for the airplane had increased enough that Hawker contracted with the Gloster Aircraft company to build them also.
During the production run, the fabric-covered wing was replaced by all-metal, a bullet-proof windscreen was added, and the engine was upgraded to the Merlin III.
August 1940 brought what has become the Hurricane’s shining moment in history: The Battle of Britain.
RAF Hurricanes accounted for more enemy aircraft kills than all other defenses combined, including all aircraft and ground defenses.
Later in the war, the Hurricane served admirably in North Africa, Burma, Malta, and nearly every other theater in which the RAF participated.
The Hurricane was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most versatile fighter aircraft of WWII, and it remained in service with the RAF until January 1947.”
The Spitfire was a fabulous airplane.
But it wasn’t the airplane that won the Battle of Britain.
“I don’t know how you can purchase a German car (a Volkswagen Rabbit),” growled an English friend long ago.
“After what they did to us in London. Air-raid shelters, innocent civilians killed, buildings reduced to rubble.”
I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above the Arizona.
Four Japanese motorcycles and three Japanese cars, plus two German cars.
I currently own a Ford, but it’s essentially a Mazda = Japanese.
Mt. Carmel ore-train or not? (Photo by Robert F. Collins©.)
—I don’t think it is.
The October 2016 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsy freight charging out of Northumberland (PA) Yard, through the parallel twin bridges over the Susquehanna.
It’s led by Decapod (2-10-0) #4315, one of the engines Pennsy crews hated.
They were hard to fire, and rode rough. As a small-drivered freight engine they couldn’t be well counterbalanced. As a 10-drivered engine the side-rods were heavy.
Pennsy tried aluminum side-rods to reduce weight, but the application needed steel.
The picture is May 10th, 1957, and Deks were kept at Northumberland for the heavy Mt. Carmel ore-train.
But I don’t think this is a Mt. Carmel ore-train. Mt. Carmel ore-trains usually had double-headed Deks up front, plus two more pushing the rear.
It’s identified as train #390, and 4315 was probably what was available.
So the train was assigned a Dek, wildly bucking if it got any speed.
The Mt. Carmel ore-train ran iron-ore up Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch for delivery to Lehigh Valley Railroad. It was probably headed for steel-mills in Bethlehem.
Pennsy was always conservative about motive-power until after WWII. The Dek is a 10-drivered Consolidation (2-8-0), what Pennsy had so many of, especially in PA.
In PA Pennsy was a mountain railroad with stiff grades. Its mainline crossed Allegheny Mountain, especially challenging.
Speedy locomotives wouldn’t do. What were needed were down-and-dirty, nothing but drivers, with all the engine-weight on those drivers.
Ergo: Consolidations, then the Decapod.
Growling diesels began displacing steam, but Deks were well-suited for the Mt. Carmel ore-train, and also heavy coal-trains up to the wharf at Sodus Point (NY) on Lake Ontario. That line was difficult.
Deks were used on Pennsy until the end of steam in late 1957.
In fact, the last train on Pennsy pulled by a steam-engine was led by a Dek.
The most collectible car of all time.—Another case of my Jerry Powell classic-car calendar being better than my Dan Lyons Classic-Car calendar.
But not by much.
The ’57 Chevy picture is not very good.
Jerry Powell is my niece’s boyfriend. He’s a car-guy like me. He got it for me as a Christmas present.
But my Tide-mark Classic Car calendar is one of those dumb-looking ’40 Buick woody stationwagons.
HO-HUM.
Everyone wants a ’57 Chevy.
Which is amazing since Ford outsold Chevrolet that year, first time in years.
Detroit was obsessed with bigger equals better, so the ’57 Ford was an all-new bigger car. Prior to 1957, Ford was based on the 1949 Shoebox. Significantly rebodied and re-engineered, but still the Shoebox underneath.
The ’57 Chevy was essentially the ’55 rebodied, plus a lower firewall. It wasn’t upsized.
That didn’t happen until the 1958 model.
My family had two ’57 Chevys at first, plus a third later to be restored.
One was a Bel Air four-door sedan, with the ancient Stovebolt Six.
The car was a pig. Even our ’53 Chevy with PowerGlide Six was faster. (Be careful with that Stovebolt link; the Stovebolt was the early four-main bearing six available through 1962.)
The resto was also a six; a two-door hardtop I think.
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| The Wagon. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
It also had duals. (“What sense does that make? That’s two tailpipes to replace.”)
It was fairly strong, and I had fun with it — the first decent car our family ever owned = not a pig.
A secret quarter-mile drag-strip had been marked on a local country road.
80 mph in PowerGlide Lo; air-cleaner off.
I goosed it once making a left-turn into an intersection and almost slid into a tree.
The ’57 Chevy went on to become one of the most popular used-cars of all time.
And now it’s the most collectible classic car, although the early Mustang would be competitive.
A convertible like this, in perfect shape, might command $150,000.
I look and wonder what anyone saw in this? A mish-mash of styling themes. Tailfins, WrapAround windshield, goofy appendages on the hood, fake exhaust outlets, Caddy-like grill heavy with chrome.
How many ’57 Chevys did I see with that center medallion bar broke?
I prefer the ’55 with its Ferrari grill.
Yet the ’57 Chevy had that fabulous SmallBlock V8 — even at one horsepower per cubic-inch! (Phenomenal at that time.)
A friend was street-racing his father’s ’54 Oldsmobile, and blew the tranny or something.
“No ’57 Chevy for you!” his father exclaimed. “You’d destroy it.”
Woody! (Photo by Dan Lyons©.)
—The October 2016 entry in my Tide-mark Classic-Car calendar is a 1940 Buick “Woody” stationwagon.
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| 1949 Plymouth Suburban. |
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| 1946 Chevrolet Suburban. |
Some body manufacturer would take a car chassis and front end, and construct a wooden body on it.
I don’t think stationwagons were made by the car manufacturers. They were called “stationwagons” because they were used by hotels, etc. to cart passengers and their luggage from a train-station.
Plymouth’s all-steel wagon was a capital idea. Soon all the car-manufacturers were making all-steel stationwagons with wood-looking applique.
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| Country-Squire (this is a ’57). |
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| Ranch wagon (this is a ’56, with custom wheels). |
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| Chevrolet’s early ‘50s stationwagon (a ’54); note wood appliques. |
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| No more wood applique; a ’55 Two-Ten Chevy. |
Ford was also successful without appliques, its all-steel “Ranch Wagon.”
The all-steel stationwagon became very popular, the family car before the minivan.
The test of a wagon was whether it could swallow a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood laid flat on the floor.
Many stationwagons had seating for nine. You could also camp out; put your sleeping-bag on the floor.
For me, riding in a stationwagon was adventure. My first was a ’51 Plymouth Suburban.
My summer-camp for boys used a ’50 Dodge Suburban as its camp car. I was taken to the hospital in it after a horse stepped on my foot.
By 1955 Chevrolet was making all-steel stationwagons without the appliques.
My family had a ’57 Chevrolet stationwagon — see photo above.
What a great idea! A car you could sleep in.
So for me the stationwagon became even more desirable than convertibles or hardtops. A ’55 Chevy wagon with 327 four-on-the-floor.
Didn’t happen. Minivans scuttled stationwagons, and now we have SUVs (Sport-Utility-Vehicles).
SUVs started out as trucks, but now are more car-like but with All-Wheel-Drive.
I drive a 2012 Ford Escape SUV, small, but perfect for chasing trains (see lead calendar-report).
I can’t sleep in it; not big enough.
My camping days are over.
Up until 1949 stationwagons were like this Buick. Wooden bodies on a car-chassis and front-end. Ash with mahogany veneer inlays.
“Woodies” became very popular with the surfer crowd on the west coast.
To me that’s just a fad.
Put a rack on top and take your board to the beach with your woody.
If no rack, open the rear window, and stuff your board on top of the tailgate.
You could also do that with a minivan, SUV, or pickup.
Labels: Monthly Calendar Report
posted by BobbaLew at 6:56 PM
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